Overview

• The partial vertebral centrum was unearthed in January at 763 feet beneath the museum’s City Park parking lot during a state-funded geothermal test drilling project assessing the Denver Basin’s heating potential.
• A peer-reviewed Rocky Mountain Geology article published in June identified the bone as belonging to a plant-eating ornithopod species from nearly 70 million years ago.
• At its depth and age, the find represents the deepest and oldest dinosaur fossil recovered within Denver city limits and ranks among only three borehole-sourced specimens globally.
• Fossilized vegetation recovered alongside the vertebra suggests the dinosaur inhabited a swampy, heavily vegetated ecosystem immediately before the asteroid event that ended the Cretaceous.
• Now on display in the museum’s “Discovering Teen Rex” exhibition, the fossil continues to drive research into urban deep-bore paleontology approaches.